


Oak and Thorn

by Eilinelithil



Series: The Language of Flowers [3]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Dreams, F/M, Intimacy, Language of Flowers, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:54:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26718604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eilinelithil/pseuds/Eilinelithil
Summary: Though not exactly flowers, trees have a language and lore all of their own, and Belle and Mister Gold encounter the power of Oak and Hawthorn in their dreams. Written for the September Monthly Rumbelling 2020.Nominated in the 2021 Espenson Awards for the Monthly Rumbelling (Smut) category.This series was nominated in the 2021 Espenson Awards for the Best Series category.
Relationships: Belle/Rumplestiltskin | Mr. Gold
Series: The Language of Flowers [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1800445
Comments: 12
Kudos: 24





	Oak and Thorn

**Author's Note:**

> This fiction was written for the Monthly Rumbelling September Moodboard.

Gold rarely slept longer than a few hours each night, spending the rest of the time in the basement, spinning at his wheel. The snatches of sleep restored his body, and the spinning his mind. However, in the days after his nightcap with Belle, he had slept longer and had the same, strange and recurring dream.

After several more days and evenings spent spinning, he tried to make sense of it, of the symbols, the feelings and emotions that had awoken in him on the evening that his walk with Belle had a destination. His front door.

_They had paused at the bottom of the driveway, and he looked over at Belle, at the light in her eyes as she took in the salmon Victorian. He braced himself, waiting for the expected comment at his choice of color for the exterior of his home. Instead Belle released the chaste hold she had on his arm, and instead took his hand, entwining their fingers._

_“It’s beautiful,” she said quietly and with a smile that allowed him to lead her along the driveway, up the steps onto the porch, and then to invite her inside. Even something so simple felt to him so intimate, perhaps even more so than the kiss they had shared in the library before their walk._

It _had_ been a chaste visit, though it was abundantly clear from the feelings in his body, and his reaction to the two of them sharing the couch, sipping from their warmed brandy, all but snuggled together, that he wanted more. From her sighs, and light touches at his neck, where he had removed his tie, and the way she breathed him in deeply on those occasions when she rested her head against his shoulder, he knew she shared his feelings, his desire.

Still, some unspoken agreement between them held then to their restraint, spoke to his heart that their courting had a way yet to go, many more sweet moments to share before they allowed their intimacy to grow once more, and he was content in that.

* * *

Belle was dreaming.

It wasn’t an unpleasant dream, just confusing… exciting in a way that denied explanation, and unlike to any other dream she could ever remember.

_The sky was leaden overhead, full of rain, perhaps snow as she stood at the foot of the hill staring up at the naked tree that stood, alone, on the summit._

_‘Wearyall… Wearyall… Wearyall…’_

_The word whispered over and over in her mind, overlaid on the words she murmured softly as instruction to herself, ‘walk the maze… bring the light…’_

_She shook her head and looked down at herself as unfamiliar clothing rustled against her body. She wore a long dress, like something from a fairy tale, and over it, a gold and maroon-red cloak that gave her warmth in the chill air._

_Slowly, she began to set one foot before the other, not walking directly up the hill to the tree, but instead taking a winding path that snaked back and forth upon itself around the hill, before returning the other way, a little further up than before._

_She knew this pattern, this ring maze. Ancient peoples believed walking such a path would awaken in them a connection with their sacred nature that would give them access to the worlds within the world._

_‘Wearyall, Wearyall Hill,_  
_Walk the maze to end the chill._  
_Wearyall, walk the path at night,_  
_Walk the maze, bring the light.’_

_It took a long time to reach the summit, the tree, but reach it she did, and then she pulled the bow that fastened her cloak to let it slip from her, to give her access to her skirts and the petticoats beneath. She ripped a small strip from the white fabric, and then reached up to tie it to the lower branch of the thorny tree._

_Where she touched, green buds formed, opening into spring green leaves, and then fragrant white flowers burst forth to fill her heart with a bubbling joy as she ran her fingers over their softness, coating the whorls of her fingertips with shining, golden-yellow pollen that became a part of her… a gift bestowed, and for_ her _to bestow upon the man she loved._

She woke, immediately looking at her fingers as though she expected to see the shimmering residue still there, but her fingers were clean, empty and no light glowed from them within the darkness of her room.

Pulling on a robe over her night-dress, she rose from her bed and headed first to the kitchen, to set the kettle to boil, and then down to the library, to collect the few books she had left on the circulation desk that needed some repair.

She wasn’t prone to insomnia, but on those occasions, like now, that she woke in the middle of the night, woken by a noise, or as now, by a dream, working on the books helped to calm and still her mind enough that she could find her way back to slumber once more - though often at the table where she worked.

As she lovingly tended the books, pausing to sip, on occasion, from the tea she had made, the dream played over and over in her head, until with alarming _un_ surprise, the dream became real as she opened the last of the books to a page containing a business card as a bookmark. She knew before she saw the name on it that the business card was Mister Gold’s, and before she she peeled back the paper from the pressed flowers, knew that she would find the white and golden yellow of the hawthorn blossoms, obviously saved since spring.

Without thought to the hour, or what others might think should they see her roaming the streets of Storybrooke in nothing but her night dress under her coat, Belle hurried from the apartment.

* * *

All that spinning had managed to do was to allow his mind to drift, to play with thoughts and images that came, unbidden to mind, like a dream. He saw a tree, an oak in full leaf, but turning as if toward autumn. Beneath the oak, a majestic stag waited, his rack full and proud.

 _You_ are _that stag of seven tines, the flood across the plain._

Lines from Belle’s poem, one of the the latest he’d found slipped between the cushions of the couch, mingled with the image in his mind as the stag turned its head to face him. In its eyes he saw himself reflected, a poor man, dressed in common, homespun clothing, gripping the smooth wood of a well worn staff as he limped along.

“I have no memory of this,” he whispered from the depth of his vision.

The image of the stag beneath the tree shrank in his minds eye, became the engraving in the gold of a ring, that swirled and changed…

_And I drown in want of you… pulled by the moon-washed tides._

…until it became the moonstone ring that banded around his finger, and he paused in his spinning to run the pad of his thumb over the warmed metal of that ring… thought seeing it clearly on the ring finger of his _left_ hand and not as it was now.

“Only call me on a summer’s day or winter’s eve,” he whispered the words of the last two notes, one from the shop’s mailbox, and the other from an envelope slipped beneath his windshield, which he had mistaken for a parking ticket at first - and he chuckled at that thought before continuing, “and I will be the Maythorn to your ancient Oak.”

A sudden hammering on his door made him jump, and then noting the time, he frowned in concern as he stretched and stood up from the wheel. Grasping his cane, he made his way up from the basement and through the house to the front door.

“Belle!” He reached to draw her inside, feeling the cold surrounding her even as he closed the door behind her. “You’re perished… what’s wro—”

She cupped his face between her hands, and pulled him down to meet her waiting kiss. His momentary tension of surprise melted, then ignited into the needful, hungry meeting of lips and tongues; the press of her body to his, even as she shrugged off her coat, then wrapped her arms around him and drew him closer, closer so he could feel the hard peak of her nipples press against his chest.

He broke the kiss, breathless, cupped her cheeks in his _own_ hands, to look deep into her eyes. He was dizzy with need, but still gentleman enough to want to be sure.

* * *

She drew a deep breath as she watched the unspoken question light the depth of his brown eyes, and answered softly, “I found your flowers. It broke my dream, and I knew…”

“My Belle,” he breathed, and passed a delicate touch across her lower lip, and she moaned softly as the touch traveled all the way to the ache already burning between her thighs.

“I want you,” she whispered, speaking the truth that she had known for a long time now. “I want to know _all_ of you, and for you to know _me_.”

She felt the change in him at her whispered words and he reached for her hand, turning until the two of them were at the foot of the stairs. Moonlight shone in through the colored glass, twinkling on the polished wood of each tread, and the turn of the stair. Not a straight climb… Like the hill.

“Walk the maze… bring the light,” she murmured, making Gold pause just as he would have mounted the first step.

“Hmm?” he asked softly, concern in his voice.

She shook her head. “Just something from my dream,” she said. “A lone tree… on a hill.”

“And that had you coming all the way here in just your night dress?” he asked, a hint of teasing in his voice.

She chuckled for a moment, and then sobering, and the thickness in her voice speaking her need, freed by their moment of levity, she said, “No. You did.” Then took a breath and murmured, “Take me to bed. Show me this is not just a dream.”

* * *

It could have been awkward; should have been, but they moved together each anticipating the other as though they had known each other forever. Her skin beneath his hands felt like the softest down, his touch, to her, like the sun’s tears, that set her soul aflame.

They rolled, tumbled, limbs tangling, breath shared as their mouths met, their lips caressed then parted to whisper words of love, expressions of need. Her fingers tangled in his hair as he worshiped at her breast, and tears bathed his cheeks at the rightness of it, a longing that he didn’t know - didn’t remember - he had fulfilled: to be in her arms.

And when at last they became one; when he took her, filled her, when she welcomed him deep inside the silk of her body, her parted thighs holding him and guiding him home, their cries and moans were a harmony. 

Neither existed without the other in a wave of light that built, drew back - tantalizing - just beyond reach, then shining brightly crested within each of them, breaking over them in shared ecstasy that drew their harmony to a crescendo in the quiet of the night.

Dissolved to breathlessness, he sank down onto her, weeping fresh tears into the crook of her neck. “Oh, my Belle… my Belle,” he whispered softly against her skin.

“Yes,” she answered, just as breathless, still trembling with the flood of emotion that filled her, just as he had done. “Yours.”

“As I am yours,” he answered, drawing from her gently, his arms ready to receive her as she turned to nestle against his chest, and their legs tangled together once more.

He reached to pull the covers up around them, and she murmured softly, sleepily, of her love for him, and he for her.

“Stay,” he murmured at last, just as sleep began to overtake them both.

“Yes,” she sighed, barely audible against his chest, allowing sleep to pull her down into its warm and gentle, shielding embrace.


End file.
